It is one of the grandest façades on the Cannaregio canal: four storeys all in living stone towering over the neighbouring small palazzi, at numbers 967-975 of the fondamenta. It was commissioned by the Surian, a family of Armenian origin admitted to the patriciate in 1648, to a design attributed to Giuseppe Sardi — the same architect as the neighbouring Palazzo Savorgnan — at the end of the seventeenth century.